Not so much with Laurel. In fact, just the opposite. Her family was big on the silent treatment, something she despised yet is remarkably deft at replicating, as she proved when she hailed a cab last Thursday night and never looked back.
That’s not entirely true. She stuck her head above the door of the cab just before she lowered herself into it and said to me, “You know where I stand. The ball is in your court.”
I stood on the sidewalk, my hands in my pockets of my jeans, and wondered what to do with the ball as I watched her cab pull away and disappear into the mix and mayhem.
If my real life were a movie—and believe me, at this point it feels like it could be—we’d watch the door of Laurel’s cab close and then the door of my grandfather’s Cadillac open days later, as Laurel gets inside. How’s that for a smooth transition? Laurel would be proud of it if she knew about it. At least something she taught me sank in, right? The importance of smooth transitions and the use of meaningful objects to link one scene to another. So in this scene, the link will be doors. As one door closes, another door opens. That’s what they say, and also what I imagined I’d tell Laurel, something along those lines, when she shut the door of the Cadillac behind her and sat down next to me in the passenger seat.
I’d called her that morning, Monday morning, unable to bear the silence, not sure about what to do with the gargantuan coffee maker that glared at me like Laurel’s angry girlfriend every time I entered my kitchen. I told Marcy I could donate it to her bakery but Marcy, who is actually one of Laurel’s girlfriends, told me she didn’t want to aid and abet a crime, and that the coffee maker was collateral damage, full of bad karma, that she didn’t need in her shop. Business was tough enough. But she did agree to deliver the final scenes of my movie to Laurel at the bakery on Sunday morning.
If I told you I’d kept my dilemma to myself between the time Laurel left in the cab and arrived in my Cadillac, I’d be lying. I told my sisters, who in turn told my mother, who left me a phone message saying that one can’t give or take advice when it comes to matters of the heart. I’d have to figure this one out on my own. But, she asked, did I hear bells?
“Hi,” I said when Laurel sat down in the passenger seat on Monday afternoon. Her hair was in a ponytail. Her cowboy boots were on, her messenger bag was over her shoulder. Everything as usual. She hadn’t gone out of her way to do herself up, to win me over with her good looks or femme-fatale ways—antics I’d been expecting based on my previous breakup experiences and which I was, honestly, disappointed not to see, as the absence of drama seemed to make my decision all the more difficult.
She smelled ever so slightly of cigarettes, which I assumed she’d turned to during the stress of the past few days, just as I’d turned to work, basketball, and Doritos. We all have our vices. The odor of hers fit in with the cigar stench of the Cadillac. I was about to tell her so after she said hello—the association of smells seemed like a perfect segue into what I intended to say—but no hello was forthcoming.
“So you think I should go to LA?” She picked up where our last conversation had left off, as though no time had passed. This tendency to hang on to, tuck away, and then retrieve every last word you’ve ever spoken is another mesmerizing ability of women. “Is that what you’re saying—or not saying—with all this silence?”
I hadn’t anticipated our conversation starting on this type of pull-no-punches note; everything I’d rehearsed went out the window. “Hey,” I said, “you were the one who drove away. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been talking plenty over the past couple of days, so I don’t know who you’re calling ‘silent.’”
“Well, you weren’t talking to me. That, to me, is silent.” She leaned over to her messenger bag, which she’d set on the floor, and flipped open the lid. “Here you go.” She lifted a small blue binder, my manuscript binder, out of the bag and dropped it onto my lap. “I don’t imagine you’ll be coming back to class—there’s only one left anyway. I gave you my comments. Your script actually turned out pretty good, much better than the Mort Chuckerman idea.” She spoke fast, her face had none of its usual expression. I got the feeling that her lines were rehearsed as well. “Although,” she added after a beat, “I’m not sure I like the end.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It ended the way it ended.”
“It ended up in the air and wishy-washy, if you ask me. What did the main character learn, how did he change or grow? He didn’t! He just rode up in the elevator, as lost as ever, and here he is now, twenty-five years later, just the same. That does not make for any sort of compelling drama.” As she spoke, her voice got louder and her arms began to talk too.
“Well,” I said, flipping through the pages of my script—which, sure enough, were marked up but good. Red, like blood, spewed all over. No wonder Laurel was relatively composed. She’d taken her anger out on my script.
“Well what?”
“Well, would your impression of my character change if I got rid of the Cadillac?”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.” Her shoulders came down slightly. Her hand went toward the charm on her necklace. I could see a softening. Ever so slight. Or perhaps her change was a figment of my imagination, my mind playing tricks, making me believe that my setup line had won her over and I was now about to say the perfect thing.
I stuffed the binder back into her bag, pulled the key to Slip’s car out of the ignition, and hung it in front of her. “Here you go. It’s all yours.”
Her hand went from her necklace to her forehead. Her other hand joined it. She rocked her head in both hands while she made some sort of noise—laughter or sobs, I couldn’t tell. Now would have been the right moment to turn on the radio to fill the awkward silence, except the keys, along with my words, were dangling midair.
Finally, she lifted her head and her hand moved to the key, which she took but continued to let hang in the air. When I saw her smirk, I knew she’d been laughing.
“Did I hear correctly? You are giving me your grandfather’s car?”
I ignored her sarcasm—I had no choice at this point—and smiled at her. “Bingo.”
I found my finger running over the top of the dash. I’d thought carefully about giving the car to Laurel, but I hadn’t thought at all about how I’d react once the giving was done.
Clearly, I hadn’t thought about how she’d react either.
She didn’t smile back at me. Instead, she turned up the side of her mouth and nose, the way Estie sometimes looks at Marcy, and asked, “Why?”
My palms started to sweat. I went to crank the window but that wouldn’t work, either, without the keys.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Laurel said, sticking the keys in the ignition and leaning over me to press my window button. “Take a couple of deep breaths and then please explain.”
“It’s not that complicated,” I said. “I know you don’t think I should keep the car, and I know you’ll need a car.”
“I don’t drive.”
“If you’re going to live in LA, you’ll have to. You can pack your things—this trunk can even hold your coffee maker—and be on your way.”
I’d intended to be generous and supportive, to do with my car for her as Slip had done for me. But as soon as I heard my words, I knew, just as Rachel had warned, that my idea was lousy.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Laurel whispered. “So not only do you not want me to stay in New York, you basically want me to get out of town as quickly as possible, in any way possible, no matter how unsafe.” She kicked the underside of the dash with her boot, then she called herself an idiot and me an asshole, which is what Rachel had also called me when I’d told her my plan.
And an ass I must be, because I honestly believed that Laurel would see the gesture as I’d meant it—as a gesture of love. Like a banana boat. “That’s what Rachel said you’d say.”
“You told your family?”
I nodded, staring at the steering wheel, not her. I cou
ldn’t face her at this point. This was not a proud moment for me.
“What a shock,” she said. “But hey,” she went on, practically spitting, “you didn’t listen to their advice. Now that is a shock.”
“They really like you.”
“Clearly more than you do.”
I set my hands on the steering wheel and pushed the middle of it in frustration. The horn went off. Laurel jumped. So did I. I honked again. And again. The honking felt good.
Laurel stuck her hand over the horn. “What are you doing?”
“I’m frustrated,” I said. “‘Honk if you’re frustrated’ would make a great bumper sticker.”
“That’s why people honk in the first place,” she said. “You don’t need a bumper sticker for that.” That’s one of the things I love about Laurel, she’s willing to tangent at any time. Although her willingness in this moment, given the heated nature of the main topic, was brief.
“Why are you frustrated?” she demanded. “’Cause your plan didn’t work like a charm? Cause I’m not pulling out of the garage as we speak?”
“Because you don’t understand,” I told her. “Giving my car, my heirloom, to you is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Watching you go is the hardest thing I’d ever done. So when you combine the difficulty of getting rid of my car with the difficultly of losing my girlfriend, you can see my frustration.” I honked a couple more times to symbolize the emotion.
“I think that’s the most honest thing you’ve said in the entire past five months,” Laurel said. She fiddled with the knobs on the radio, flipped through a few stations, and then turned it off. “So why are you doing it?”
I shrugged.
She pushed my shoulders down. “Speak.”
“Because you need wheels. You are going places,” I said. “And it’s not my place to stop you. I’d rather give you the car now than have you steal it from me one day.”
“When you have a really fancy one,” Laurel joked.
“You know. You read the script.”
“So it’s a preemptive strike?”
“I guess so.” I shrugged again.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, then Laurel opened the door, walked to the front of the car, and sat down on the hood. I followed her.
The air was cold, typical of October. The river looked rough and uninviting. The wind off the water seemed loud. I raised my voice above it to say, “The crest of the Cadillac family.”
Laurel looked at me, confused and silent.
I put my hand on hers, which was toying with the emblem on the hood of the car—boinging it back and forth, twisting it, like we used to do as kids. Laurel, of course, was twisting with anger and upset rather than amusement and curiosity.
“That’s what the emblem is,” I explained. “The coat of arms of the family of Le Sieur Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac, the man who founded the city of Detroit.”
“I know,” she said. “I read the script.” She spoke toward the water; then she looked away, but I saw her wipe away a tear that had pooled in the corner of her eye. She got to it before it fell, so I wouldn’t see. But I did. Don’t forget, I had a grandmother who had a side job wiping her watery eyes. Tears were something I was tuned into.
What struck me at that moment was not how bad I felt—though, believe me, I felt terrible. Show me a guy who doesn’t feel bad when he makes a girl cry and I’ll show you a schmuck. What struck me at that moment was that I found myself wondering what Laurel would look like when she got old. I reimagine women all the time, but never with age. I pictured bags under her eyes, hanging like they’d hung from Estelle’s. I tried to picture extra skin dangling from her chin, the color gone from her hair, but I couldn’t. On the day when Slip took Estelle for their first ride, I’m sure that Slip didn’t imagine it, either. Estelle looked beautiful and Slip simply liked having her by his side. He probably didn’t think about what would be, what was to come, the end of the line.
I picked up Laurel’s hand, the one fiddling with the emblem. “It’s fragile,” I said, nodding at the emblem so she wouldn’t get excited and think I was referring to something deeper, like our relationship or my psyche. “Ever since it broke the first time.”
“Right,” Laurel said, taking her hand away from mine. “You know what I think? I’m going to tell you what I think and then I’m going to go. I’m going to go by foot. You can keep the car. I hope you two are very happy together.” She gave the hood of the car a pat. “But I will tell you”—finally, she turned to look at me—“that I think it’s ironic that a guy who keeps a car as his mascot is too scared to make a move. It’s ironic and sad. And, for your information, I don’t think Slip would have let Estelle drive to LA by herself. He wouldn’t have tossed the keys at her and told her to go it alone. He would have stepped up.”
I put my hand on her knee. I nodded. I understood, and I also felt guilty that she’d been sucked so deep into my issues by my movie. On the other hand, nobody had ever known me so well. “I think,” I said, “Slip would have done whatever the hell he wanted, and I don’t think I’m necessarily like him.”
Laurel put a hand on my knee. “I disagree on both counts.” She moved both of her hands into her jacket pockets and turned back toward the river. She whipped her head to shake away the strands of hair the wind was blowing across her face.
The first time I took Laurel out in the car, after we went to the Verrazano Bridge, we’d sat in the park together, and as she talked, I’d stared at the freckles on her legs, wanting to touch them and to make her laugh. “I’d go down with the ship,” I remember I told her, referring to the car, the Cadillac, in the event of disaster. And it seemed that now, I was.
Laurel slid off the front of the car. “And I’ve got news for you. I’m nothing like your grandmother, either. True, I don’t drive, and yes, I am willing to put up with all of your nonsense, but I have a career, I have a life.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unsure of whether I felt more sorry for me or for her. Somehow, endings are never as depressing for the party moving on, which is what Laurel began to do.
She took a few steps backwards. “I am too, Chuckerman. I hope you will be happy.” With nothing more, she turned and walked toward the stairs.
I watched her go, like the guys in the movies always do.
When she disappeared through the door, I got back inside the Cadillac. Laurel had left the keys on the passenger seat. I grabbed them. I didn’t know where I was headed, but I needed to go somewhere to escape, to clear my head. Ironically, the reason I’d taken Laurel’s class in the first place had been to do exactly that. Look where that got me, I thought as I slid the key into the ignition.
I didn’t debate whether I’d done the right thing. It was as if I hadn’t had a hand in the matter. People are who they are. It is what it is. You can’t make a tiger or a leopard change its spots. You’ve just got to play the hand you’re dealt.
I turned on the radio to see what kind of song I could find to match my mood and as I played with the buttons, I saw her purse.
Laurel’s ugly brown messenger bag was resting on the floor of the passenger seat. I reached down to it and pulled out my movie binder, which I opened on my lap. In the back, she had attached a critique. I scanned down the page for my grade like a kid who cared what my teacher gave me, as if it was going toward my grade point average.
She’d given me a B. A fat capital B, written in royal blue marker. Her review said essentially the same thing she’d told me: something about failure of the characters to evolve and too much reliance on the narrator in telling the story. “Please know,” she’d written, “that your grade has nothing to do with the ending of our personal relationship.” I realized that she’d known before she met me here what the outcome was going to be.
With effort, I lifted the entire bag onto the seat next to me and poked though it. Sugar-free Bubbalicious, lip gloss, tampons, highlighters, sunglasses, seashells, a cigarette lighter, a paperback dictionary, and,
on the bottom, a bunch of loose change.
I scooped up the coins, slowly sorted them into piles in my hand, and dumped them into the side pocket of Laurel’s wallet, where they should have been in the first place. Then I turned the key, because suddenly I knew where I was going.
Not that I heard bells. I don’t believe in bells. I wasn’t sure whether the kick came from Slip’s spirit, alive and well in his car, or from Estelle, sending me signs via the scattered coins, or simply from my own self, but what did it matter? I warmed the engine and slowly backed the Caddy out of its space. Laurel would soon miss—if she didn’t already—the absence of the weight on her shoulder, and she’d be back. I pulled the car up to the door of the staircase and waited with the motor running.
The garage exit faced west. If she was willing, I would tell her, I could leave right now. I would drive her to Los Angeles.
I would drive her wherever she wanted to go.
Acknowledgments
I started writing this book when my kids were five years old, and now they’re licensed to drive. Its chapters were written, rewritten, and then rewritten some more. Without the encouragement, guidance, wisdom and workshops of the wise and funny Steve and Sharon Fiffer, I could not have seen this thing through. Therefore, I am forever grateful to the Wesley Writers Workshop. Thank you, too, to my fellow “Wednesdays” for the years of listening, sharing, and support, especially to Joyce, Barb, Diane, and Bill who’ve been with me since the beginning.
For turning my manuscript into a book and for getting my book into the hands of people beyond my parents, I’d like to thank Brooke Warner, Cait Levin, and the team at She Writes Press, and Crystal Patriarche and her BookSparks team, especially Ashley Alfirevic, for their creativity, leadership, and dedication to women writers.
Finally, my family. I’ll start with my husband, Kenny, who deserves thanks more than anyone else for his neverending patience, faith in me, and every imaginable kind of support. Thank you, too, to my daughters, Lilly and Gracie, for being my two most favorite people. Next are those who came first, the Arensons. To Arthur, Merle, and Joey, thank you for providing me with decades of love and laughs—as well as with much of the material for this book.
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